FiFty Fifty

Chapter Seven

SHE

After her arraignment, she had posted bail. So had Sister dear.
The rest of that day proved busy.
Very busy.
Every effort had to be made to cover her tracks, and frame her sister. When
she eventually flopped into bed at one a.m., exhausted, she realized she had eaten very little the previous day.
She had slept fitfully. Waking at five a.m., she made a peanut butter sandwich, ate it with a glass of milk and then went back to bed. She dozed and woke a few times. Her broken sleep was not due to any worry, or concern. The thought of returning to a cell for the rest of her life didn't hold any fear.
It wasn't going to happen.
Not a chance.
The interruption to her sleep was largely due to excitement. She was finally
going to be free. Freedom meant money. All of her father's money. If her sister was convicted, she couldn't inherit her share of father's estate because of the Son of Sam laws. She would get everything. Money meant freedom and power. She had thought about killing her sister, and then Father – but two deaths leaving a sole beneficiary to a large fortune looked too suspicious. It would forever tarnish her with the uncertainty of facing a trial for their deaths at some point in her life. This way was better. This was clean. Father dead. Sister in jail for the murder. No loose ends. No suspicion falling on her.
She would be free.
She got out of bed around ten in the morning. In the shower, she scrubbed her skin with a rough, cosmetic stone. The ridges of that stone were a wonder to her. If she did not pay attention, she could spend half an hour touching it, exploring every line on its surface.
She dried herself and tied up her hair. Before completing her task last night, she had done some shopping. Food and essential items – some tools for the job in hand. There were still three shopping bags from a medical supply store and a hardware store by the front door. She was too tired to unpack just yet.
She dressed, blow-dried her hair and the rest of that day she spent on the couch, eating potato chips and watching a string of old movies – Casablanca,

The 39 Steps, and finally Rear Window. An outfit lay on the bed, waiting for her. Black Lycra leggings, and an Underarmor top. She dressed, put on her running shoes and tucked her hair into the black Nike ballcap. Before leaving her apartment, she stretched her legs, back, arms, and shoulders.
On the street, she broke into a light jog to warm her muscles, find a rhythm, adjust her breathing. After Mother died, she and her sister had been placed into separate boarding schools. Both in Virginia, a hundred miles apart. It had been in boarding school when she had found her love of running. A year after Mother died, she turned thirteen. Neither sister went home for weekends. Her gym teacher had been a cross-country champion in her youth, and had given the bug to her. She loved being in the open country on Saturday mornings, watching the sun come up over the endless wheat fields, her lungs fit to burst. No one around her. Just her thoughts, and plans. The running helped keep the dark thoughts at bay for some years. Now, as a young woman, she no longer felt the need to keep those demons in check. At fourteen she had given serious thought to strangling another girl in her class. Melanie Bloomington. Even the name made her want to be sick. Melanie wore her hair long, in impossibly complex pigtail knots, her skin pink and perfect, just like her class test scores – nothing about Melanie Bloomington was less than perfect.
She thought it would be fun to strangle Melanie in the toilet block. Get her into a stall, grab her school tie and pull and twist and yank until Melanie's perfect pink face was red, then purple and then blue and quite dead. And then, she could touch Melanie's face, her eyes, her lips. But this could not be done in school. It would cause a panic. Too much attention. Still, it was hard to resist.
One Sunday morning, she found herself in a small wood on the edge of the vast school grounds. She stopped to examine a flower, its bright yellow petals looked like velvet and as she reached for it she heard a noise. A rustling and bleating. She stepped carefully over a large fallen tree trunk, and in a clearing up ahead she saw a fawn. It had become trapped in the remnants of an old post and wire fence, which must have demarcated some old boundary before the wood grew unchecked and swallowed it up. The fawn was near death. A large, murderous raven sat on a large stone some distance away. It could smell the blood as surely as she could. It was waiting for the fawn to die – which, from the look of the animal, would not take very long. Three legs had become entangled in the rusting barbed wire, and during the course of struggling to get free, it had managed to almost sever its foreleg.
The smell of blood was strong now. She approached the creature, who did not panic when it saw her coming toward it, slow and low, whispering softly. Either it hoped for rescue, or it no longer had the strength to resist. From her backpack